Multiplant MRP

Many manufacturing firms have multiple manufacturing plants, located in geographically diverse parts of the world. This situation is becoming more common, as firms establish new plants in foreign countries to take advantage of low labor cost. In such cases, it is not unusual for the firm to retain production capability of certain key parts in a backup plant, with the necessary equipment and trained workforce in place. High volume production could be obtained relatively quickly from the backup plant in case of an emergency at the main supplying plant. In such multiplant settings, the transportation costs are significant. Throughout this paper, we use the term “multisourced parts” to describe parts produced in more than one location.Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is the component of a total manufacturing control system that is designed to manage inventory and plan orders for parts and material with dependent demand (demand derived from the demand of other items). Most of the literature on MRP systems discusses MRP methodology in a single-plant environment. Most MRP software systems in use today are single-plant systems.Currently, it is common for firms with multiple plants treated as cost centers to use an independent single-plant MRP system for each and handle the transshipment problems manually. Because of lack of coordination of production schedules between supplying and demanding plants, those firms hold more inventory and experience longer lead times than necessary to compensate for uncertainties in schedules and supply policies.The purpose of this article is to enhance single-plant MRP systems for coping with multiplant situations in which: the plants are regarded as cost centers, there exist multisourced parts, and the transportation costs are significant. The multiplant MRP system should recognize that parts are produced in different plants, make offset calculations for in-transit lead times, and consider transportation costs when establishing production requirements and shipping routes for multisourced parts. The objective is, beginning with the corporate-determined master schedule for finished products, to communicate in one planning cycle time-phased planned order release schedules and shipping/delivery schedules to each manufacturing plant producing components for the finished products.We first present a simplified framework for the multiplant MRP system, where a transportation algorithm is incorporated into the MRP logic. Then we refine this simplified framework to handle more complex aspects of a multiplant network. These complexities include the treatment of requirements that are not shipped on time and the regeneration of new MRP schedules. We also observe that the solution to the transportation problem described above is affected by the lot-sizing rules employed. In addition, we discuss several important issues and decisions that confront a firm when implementing a multiplant MRP system.     

On the determinants of yield spreads between mortgage pass-through and Treasury securities

Yield spreads between mortgage pass-through and U.S. Treasury securities may reflect differences in taxation, phenomena affecting relative supply and demand, and compensation for default, call, and marketability risks on mortgage instruments. Our research empirically models differences in yields between pass-throughs and comparable-maturity Treasuries. We find that interest-rate volatility and the term structure of rates, factors often cited in the mortgage pricing literature as affecting the mortgage call premium, are the primary determinants of movements in these spreads. Moreover, these effects have grown in importance in recent years as exercise of the prepayment option has increased. We also find evidence that liquidity and credit concerns affect the pricing of pass-through securities.     

Measuring central bank independence: a tale of subjectivity and of its consequences

The paper first scrutinises the two indices of central bankindependence (CBI) most commonly used in the empirical literature.It defines and discovers an impressive interpretation spread,a major criteria spread but a negligible weighting spread inthose indices Second, it framing the robustness of the empirical‘common knowledge’ on the benefits of CBI. It findsthat, when rankings produced by various CBI indices are regressedwith, among others, average inflation, 87 5% of die regressioncoefficients are not statistically significant Third, followingrecent theoretical developments, it suggests an alternativeapproach to the measurement of a central bank's operationalstatus.     

East Asia's growth: technology or accumulation?

Krugman, building on the work of Alwyn Young, has argued that hypergrowth in East Asia derives mostly from factor accumulation, owing little to technological change. Yet this explanation is at odds with what analysts of technological change have to say about technology acquisition in these countries. This article examines the Young-Krugman thesis and argues that the problem lies in the misconception of technological change as distinct from accumulation. The critique is taken further by means of a review of the multifaceted way that technology raises the productivity of labor. It is argued that technology is carried not as disembodied knowledge, but as techniques hard-coded in physical devices and structures, by patterns soft-coded in human and organizational capabilities and business-friendly institutions, formal and informal. These operate as symbiotic complements, not separable substitutes as assumed in conventional theory. These arguments are supplemented by perspectives introduced from the technology literature. Since the respective roles and relationship between accumulation and technology are scrutinized, the analysis provides important policy conclusions on the value of East Asian growth strategies.     

Robust tests for time-invariant individual heterogeneity versus dynamic state dependence

We derive tests for persistent effects in a general linear dynamic panel data context. Two sources of persistent behavior are considered: time-invariant unobserved factors (captured by an individual random effect) and dynamic persistence or “state dependence” (captured by autoregressive behavior). We will use a maximum likelihood framework to derive a family of tests that help researchers learn whether persistence is due to individual heterogeneity, dynamic effect, or both. The proposed tests have power only in the direction they are designed to perform, that is, they are locally robust to the presence of alternative sources of persistence, and consequently, are able to identify which source of persistence is active. A Monte Carlo experiment is implemented to explore the finite sample performance of the proposed procedures. The tests are applied to a panel data series of real GDP growth for the period 1960–2005.     

The sales recovery audit: Learning to walk the talk

Little research attention has been devoted to the impact of salesperson failure and recovery management on customer relationship development. This paper develops a theoretically anchored and externally validated sales recovery audit for the purpose of assessing sales organization performance in these matters. Results based on a survey of 177 sales managers indicate that practice of sales recovery efforts lags behind their perceived importance as they relate to organizational success. The sales recovery audit presented here can be a useful tool to continuously evaluate and enhance sales recovery efforts for the purpose of building a stronger relationship selling organization.     

Analysing reviews in the Web 2.0: Small and medium hotels in Portugal

This study presents a characterisation of online reviews for small and medium hotels (SMH) in Portugal. We collected and analysed 1500 online reviews from 50 SMH. The findings show that room, staff and location were the concepts most frequently appeared in the reviews, with cleanliness, friendliness, helpfulness, and centrality of position the terms most frequently used to qualify the concepts. This study points out the main features which SMH managers should prioritize.     

Extreme Value Theory and Statistics of Univariate Extremes: A Review

Statistical issues arising in modelling univariate extremes of a random sample have been successfully used in the most diverse fields, such as biometrics, finance, insurance and risk theory. Statistics of univariate extremes (SUE), the subject to be dealt with in this review paper, has recently faced a huge development, partially because rare events can have catastrophic consequences for human activities, through their impact on the natural and constructed environments. In the last decades, there has been a shift from the area of parametric SUE, based on probabilistic asymptotic results in extreme value theory, towards semi‐parametric approaches. After a brief reference to Gumbel's block methodology and more recent improvements in the parametric framework, we present an overview of the developments on the estimation of parameters of extreme events and on the testing of extreme value conditions under a semi‐parametric framework. We further discuss a few challenging topics in the area of SUE. © 2014 The Authors. International Statistical Review © 2014 International Statistical Institute     

Do economic freedom,business experience,and firm size affect internationalization speed? Evidence from small firms in Chile,Colombia, and Peru

Journal of International Entrepreneurship - This paper focuses on SMEs from the Latin American region and aims to build on existing literature on the emergence of the institution-based view in...